A Living Study – MFA essay

A Living Study – MFA essay

Enjoying a moment with Griffin – photo courtesy of Dewin Anguas Barnette

Personal Narrative essay – by Jess Pillmore

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I am sitting in a library, up to my elbows in critical theory, encyclopedias of knowledge and charts illustrating scientific findings.  I have snuck away from my 19 month-old son, in the middle of sleep, to sit in this library.  I am reading about what makes one an individual, when it begins and how it transforms over a lifetime.  In essence, I am reading about my son’s current journey… and mine.

       Riffling through philosophy and Freud, I found a child development book for parents about nurturing the little ones in their home.  I was amazed that the age of awareness that we are individual people was between 18 and 36 months.  Here I am at the beginning of my son’s discovery that he is in fact his own person.  And not only that, but the discovery of who that person is.

I wasn’t oblivious to this phase.  I felt it coming, that’s for sure, with more and more urgent statements of “No!” and “Want to!” echoing through our house, our car, our sleepy, sometimes sleepless, nights.  But what hit mighty hard was the irony: I am pulling myself away from a living study in order to readabout the process.  It felt, well honestly, it feels odd and hard to justify.  Taking time away from helping my child discover who he is, so I can discover whom I am?  I am reminded of the airline stewardess’s monotone speech, “In the event of an emergency, oxygen masks will drop down from over head.  Please secure your own mask before placing one on your child.”  Makes sense in theory, but practice and theory, that’s what this is all about.

Teaching Single Sword with Griffin – photo courtesy of Eric T. Rousseau

I decided to leave the library early.  Placing an armful of books on the return cart, I headed out the door just in time to receive a text from Grandma.  “Someone’s looking for Mama.”  My cue, and I’m a performer, I understand cues, entrances, exits and timing… it’s all in the timing.  So, off I run, thankful for trusting my gut.  Thankful that I wasn’t crazy, that I did need to go home and be with my son.  It wasn’t fear or resistance.  It was intuition.  Right?

That’s the hard thing with intuition, there’s no proof, no encyclopedic knowledge, no charts illustrating scientific findings.  There’s only trust and the self-confidence to believe you know what’s best for you.  Is that part of owning your individuality?  Intuition?  In order to know what’s best for you, you would most certainly have to know you.

Once reunited with my son, things slipped back into their groove – milk, running, reading, rolling around, horsey – until it was already naptime again.  He was fussing a bit over the monitor then singing then fussing and something click in me.

I usually try and busy myself when he’s trying to put himself to sleep.  It’s hard for me to hear him struggle with it.  This is still a new life skill he’s trying to learn.  But this time, I decided to open my computer and record him.  Propped up against the monitor, I quickly opened an easy recording application and selected a new project, my son’s voice.  I had always wanted to record him to preserve the memories because it all moves so fast.  But I’m not the type to take pictures during a vacation or write in journals on a daily basis.  Experiencing the moment has always been more important to me than preserving or documenting it.  And maybe that’s why I never had recorded him.  But today was different.

I didn’t have all the normal excuses of perfection needed – proper microphone and setting, proper camera and lighting, etc.  This time I just went for it, easy, quick and done; all to have something to work with for my study on individuality.  I was experiencing my son expressing his feelings about going to sleep and how difficult it was under the high energy excitement of being on the road for two months, being at ‘Nana’s and Papa’s and having just recovered from sickness.  He was definitely telling me his mind.

Teaching Single Sword with Griffin – photo courtesy of Eric T. Rousseau

I was also experiencing my journey of becoming an individual again, but in a different form.  For over a year, my husband and I were attached to my son in everyway.  I was physically attached to him even before birth and definitely after.  My son nursed for 2 hours immediately after he was born, much to the amazement of the midwives, nurses and hospital staff.  Needless to say, he’s been connected ever since.  And I adapted to this need, this extremely vulnerable child who couldn’t turn over, lift his head – survive without someone’s constant care.

This was a brief period of my life, which felt like a lifetime.  Much like a car accident where ever millisecond is accounted for with vibrant detail.  When the body and mind is on high alert recording everything in the moment pre and during an accident.  Everything is new.  Everything could be important.  So, the brain memorizes every moment, emotion and sensation in order to survive what is happening.  This was life with a newborn for me.

Not that it was negative as a car crash can be.  Quite the contrary, it was the most positive experience in my life to date.  But it was absolutely disruptive to my previous life and sense of who I was.  As a mother of a newborn, I was not an individual.  I was a WE.  And in life’s humorous way, as soon as I started to get the hang of this duet, my son was ready to become his own person.

Directing Musical workshop with Griffin

So, here I am studying ensembles and the individuals inside them.  Subconsciously trying to figure out myself inside motherhood?  Probably, but not solely.  This is just another clear example of how the seemingly individual threads of my life – work, motherhood, marriage, art – are woven into an intricate and ever-changing pattern of me.  Which makes me question are any of us truly individuals?  Even inside ourselves, there are many selves.  Are we all tiny communities built out of tinier communities, all trying to focus on a common goal?